


Strangers

by Melime



Series: Not the one you lost [5]
Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Femslash Big Bang Monthly Challenge, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Stand Alone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 06:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9870938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime
Summary: They were strangers to one another, wearing familiar faces.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Português brasileiro available: [Estranhas](https://archiveofourown.org/works/9870959) by [Melime GreenLeaf (Melime)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Melime/pseuds/Melime%20GreenLeaf)



> Written for [Femslash Big Bang](http://femslashbigbang.tumblr.com/)'s February monthly challenge, "strangers". This is part of the Not the one you lost series, but can be read as a stand alone.

They were strangers to one another, wearing familiar faces.

This Samantha Carter wasn’t the one that Janet knew and fell in love with, that Sam died, she watched her die and could do nothing to save her, and nothing would ever bring her back.

This Janet Fraiser wasn’t the one that Sam knew and fell in love with, that Janet died, on the field saving other people’s lives while Sam was too busy to even know where she was, and nothing would ever bring her back.

They weren’t the same people they knew and lost, and they couldn’t fill the holes those losses left in each other’s lives. They were strangers to one another, familiar faces notwithstanding.

And still, they shared so many experiences, and didn’t at the same time.

Alternate universes were a proven reality for a while now, and not just a theory, at least when it came to the SGC, but there was still so much they didn’t know about them. There was so much they didn’t know about most of what they encountered through the program.

Sam knew more about the physics behind alternate realities than anyone else on Earth, but she was still clueless as to a more philosophical aspect of it. Everything that happened before the event that split the two realities, were they shared experiences or simply similar? Could this woman be the one that she loved, even if she weren’t now?

This whole plan had been a mistake from the start. Finding the reality that split from hers, finding a place where the Janet that loved her still lived, had been a way for Sam not to deal with the pain and the grief. As long as she was searching for something she knew existed, but was unlikely to ever find, she didn’t have to think about losing her lover and not even being able to share her grief, as her relationship had to be kept a secret. Now, she found what should never have been found, and was faced with questions to which she had no answers.

And she had involved this Janet into her mess of a plan, intruded into Janet’s grief, because she couldn’t face the possibility of a problem she couldn’t fix.

There they were now, and it was too late to just turn back and pretend they never met. Just moments before, they were strangers, and now they had met, and they couldn’t go back to not knowing of each other’s existence.

An alternate version of the person they loved was better than nothing at all, and if nothing else, they were both uniquely qualified to understand each other’s pain. It was almost a cliche, like when people from grief counseling groups fell for each other, because no one else could understand them. Although of course things weren’t as simple, because they were both committing treason and placing their respective realities in danger. And they couldn’t stop now.

It didn’t matter that they were strangers, or that they had just met, or that they knew nothing about each other’s lives in the last few months. Their connection was instantaneous and strong, as strong as the one they had with the deceased counterparts of the person in front of them. From the moment their connection became real and tangible, it couldn’t be broken.

They couldn’t be together, not really. They still had their obligations in their respective SGC, and neither could live in the other’s reality without abandoning more than they were willing to leave behind. If nothing else, Cassandra kept them anchored, by being alive in both realities she was keeping them from being able to reformulate their family in a single reality. But they couldn’t be apart either, not really. Once the door was opened, it couldn’t be closed, they would always know there was a way for them to meet, and wouldn’t be able to stop themselves from using it.

They were strangers to one another, and they knew each other better than anyone.

They didn’t even need to discuss it to know that they wanted this, that they would risk everything for whatever few precious moments they could steal together. There was a lot to talk about, still. Practical details that needed to be settled, decisions about exactly how far they were willing to go, and how they could take precautions to keep their respective realities as safe as they possibly could while still opening the window. But all of that could wait, they didn’t need to decide everything at once, they knew they were both willing to do this and it was all that mattered for the moment.

Perhaps they weren’t in love yet, perhaps what they felt for each other now was just the ghost of a relationship that ended abruptly and violently. They were strangers to one another, after all, just wearing familiar faces. This wasn’t the Sam Janet knew, and this wasn’t the Janet Sam knew, but they were close enough, close enough for them to know they would fall for each other all over again.

Their relationship would never be what it was with their counterparts. It would always be tempered with the pain of knowing what losing the other would feel, what their lifeless body looked like, how it felt to have to tell their daughter that she had lost half her family. They could never go back, and things would be even harder now than they had been before, and they were never easy to start with. From now on, the risk wasn’t just losing their careers if anyone ever found out about them, but losing their freedom at the very least, and quite possibly their lives, that if they didn’t cause about the destruction of one or both of their worlds in the process. But they would still try.

They were strangers to one another, wearing familiar faces, and they knew how life could be without the other, so they would do anything to be together.


End file.
